Stage Review - Lend Me a Tenor (Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts)

Stage Review - Lend Me a Tenor
Presented By: Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts - Marysville, WA
Show Run: April 11 - April 27, 2025
Date Reviewed: Sunday, April 13, 2025 (Opening Weekend)
Run Time: 2 Hours, 10 Minutes (including a 15 minute intermission)
Reviewed By: Greg Heilman

If you see me walking around town with a bag over my head, it doesn’t mean that you’ve found my alter ego, “The Unknown Critic”, it means I’m hiding my face because for the life of me, I have no idea why I’ve never heard of Ken Ludwig’s Lend Me a Tenor before seeing it on Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts’ schedule. After all, not only is the play, this production of it runs through April 27 in Marysville, Ken Ludwig’s first hit, it was produced by none other than Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber on London’s West End, opening there in 1986 before hitting Broadway a few years later, 1989 to be precise. Called “one of the most brilliant and inspired new comedies this year” (said of the West End production), it was nominated for seven Tonys and six Drama Desk awards, winning two and four, respectively. A Broadway revival, a musical version, and a sequel called Comedy of Tenors later followed, as did translations into sixteen languages and productions in twenty-five countries. The play, which was originally called Opera Buffa, wasn’t without its controversy, though. It originally referred primarily in its text to the opera Otello (the opera based on Shakespeare’s Othello), but ostensibly because of the some questionable elements in it, namely the use of blackface (in Otello, not in Lend Me a Tenor), Otello was replaced by the opera Pagliacci. Since then, Pagliacci is the opera that the show’s prospective hero, Tito Merelli has come to sing at the Cleveland Grand Opera Company. But this is a Ken Ludwig play, and it’s a monumental farce, so when one should become the “prospective” hero, you can bet that what transpires in the story is the farthest thing from it. As a classic farce, it’s both simple and complex at the same time, and while it does follow the standard formula of the genre, what sets this apart from others in the genre is its American sensibility, high brow setting, and Ludwig’s mature and structured writing style.

The famous opera singer, “Il Stupendo”, Tito Merelli’s arrival is being eagerly anticipated by the opera’s general manager Henry Saunders. Saunders, growing more frustrated by the minute when there’s no sign of the opera singer, has his greatest fear alleviated when he finally arrives with his short tempered and long suffering wife Maria, though just hours before he’s scheduled to perform. Saunders places his assistant Max in charge of Merelli while he heads to the opera house to make final preparations, but something happens while Il Stupendo is in Max’s care. Wanting to take a nap in hopes of settling his nervous stomach, he asks Max to join him for a glass of wine. Meanwhile, hiding in the closet in the hotel suite’s bedroom is Saunder’s daughter Maggie, who is hoping to get an autograph, but is instead mistaken by Maria as a girl that her husband is seeing on the side, thereby causing Maria to storm out of the room. Back in the living room of the suite, Max takes a drastic action to help Tito get some sleep by slipping a sedative in his wine, but what he doesn’t realize is that the singer has been double dosed and subsequently passes out, ostensibly dead on the bed in the hotel room. Discovered later by Max, panic ensues, and he notifies Saunders, who is more interested in the revenue from the performance that he could be missing as the result of having a dead singer on his hands than anything else, so the pair hatch a plan to replace Tito Merelli with a substitute, someone who could pass for the singer, so that they can make their money and worry about cleaning up the mess later. It just so happens that the normally nervous and awkward assistant Max has a heck of a voice, though if you were to believe the Bellhop who carries the opera singer’s bags to the room you’d think his voice was better, and after a decent amount of cajoling from Saunders, Max begrudgingly agrees to do it.

As with most farces, Act 1 is largely the setup, which is what it is here. Act 2, you can only imagine, with cases of mistaken identity, especially when the real Tito wakes up and tries to get into the opera house himself, in costume, is really the comic payoff, and Lend Me a Tenor pays off in a big way. It’s an hilarious farce of the greatest degree and has all of the elements that are required, creatively timed opening and closing of doors, a foolproof plan that is anything but, characters that are not at all redeeming doing their best to pull one over on those that are, the most improbable of scenarios, and of course absurdly exaggerated characterizations. The Red Curtain production displays all of those qualities, and under the direction of Morgan Peeler does so in a way that presents dialogue that is quickly paced and reactionary, meaning that actors don’t necessarily pause to wait for another to finish before starting their lines, and movement that has the cast he has assembled constantly in motion. That motion requires a set that can keep the movement going so that the the pace of the play doesn’t stagnate, and what I’ve come to expect from Scott B. Randall and his scenic designs is that sense of flow, and the set for Lend Me A Tenor is no different. There is a requirement here, that the set represent one location, the hotel suite where Saunders is putting Tito up, but it needs to be divided into two rooms, the sitting, or living, area, where much of the action takes place, and the bedroom, where the audience will find the all important closets and the bed on which Tito passes out. The audience needs to be able to see what’s happening in both rooms at the same time, plays like this will generally have things going on in multiple places simultaneously. Between the rooms, of course, is one of many doors, but what Scott has done is he has set the doorway back a bit, upstage from the audience thereby extending the reach of the living area so that the action that takes place in that space can stretch out a little, breathe if you will. It’s a nice piece of stagecraft, a way to make that room larger without taking away from the base requirement of the room layout. It’s also a set that flows in design, one that has two rooms that feels like it was designed as a whole unit with wall decorations that join the two rooms together in a confluence of style.

Scott’s also done a nice job with his lighting, especially in how he has worked with Morgan to stage scenes in which Saunders imagines himself presenting to an audience. For example, he might tell Max, “I can just picture it…” then stepping away into a spotlight and imagining himself speaking to the audience at the opera house, then the spot turns off and he’s back talking to Max. It does take a village to bring a farce to life, there is so much going on, and the creative team needs to be on top of its game, and that includes the set and lights, but also sound design (Aiden Pieckiel), and stage management (Daniel Hanlon). Costumes are another key element here, especially because things change so quickly, the costumes have to serve their purpose of informing the characters’ personalities and style, but also be able to be changed quickly, and Spencer Bartholomew has hit both targets with his work here. Each actor, for the most part, has two costumes, the Act 1 more casual piece, and the Act 2 event piece, which I adore, especially what he has the ladies wearing for the opera. And of course there’s the singer’s costume for his performance of Pagliacci, of which he brought two, which may or may not play into the story. It’s a well told farce from the creative aspect, but at the end of the day, it really comes down to the ensemble, and how good they are at presenting the humor of these absurd and overly exaggerated situations that speak to a show’s success.

Within this ensemble there are really two groups, the first, which is comprised of Renni Elliot as Max, Chris Bartness as Henry Saunders, Laura Hampton as his daughter and sometimes on, sometimes off girlfriend of Max and huge fan of Tito Merelli, who is played by Kennan Miller. Beyond this quartet is the supporting group, just as important, but their roles are a little more specific to certain story arcs within the play. Anita Cannon plays Tito’s short tempered wife Maria, Autumn Owens is Diana, the opera’s lead soprano who isn’t afraid to do whatever she needs to (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more) in order to get to the top, Monica Chilton plays Julia, the Chairwoman of the Cleveland Opera Guild, and Drew Sage rounds out the cast as the Bellhop, a fan of opera and bigger fan of Il Stupendo, a character whose timing is horrendous, but hilariously so, and who has an ongoing feud with Saunders who, according to Drew’s character can never tip enough. Whether in the lead group or supporting group, each actor does their job, and does it well, delivering the physical humor, the witty dialogue, the right facial expression at the right time, and the choreography that is required to make it all come together.

Max is the de facto lead here, and yes Renni captures the nervousness of the character very well, especially romantically with Laura’s Maggie. There’s not a lot of deviation from how they play Max in Act 1, but in Act 2, Renni displays a good deal of agility between Max and the substitute Tito. Again with Laura’s Maggie, who is determined from the beginning to get close to the singer, Renni is very good, and Laura plays her character with a wonderful gusto and in Act 2 a seductiveness that is comical in the context of the story, but not corny. And yes, Renni can sing, and sing extremely well. Speaking of singing, of course there’s Tito, and Kennan does well here, and some of his funniest scenes are with Anita as his wife Maria. The angry and snarky banter between the two is so funny, and instead of worrying about accuracy in their Italian accents, they both, as does Renni in Act 2 as “the imposter”, lean into the Italian accent stereotype, but in no way disrespecting it. I like Kennan’s performance here, and in Act 2, especially when the overriding confusion of who is who, and which Tito is which Tito hits its high water mark, his acting is genuinely excellent, his ability to portray his own confusion, or repulsion, or angst very good. For my money, though, and especially among the leads, it’s Chris Bartness who steals the show as Henry Saunders. His frustration, nervousness, anger, especially when it boils over in Act 2, is so well played and Chris has a firm grasp on how to deliver each of these with the right amount of humor by playing his character largely straight. Some of the funniest physical comedy comes from his character as well, it’s just a solid all around comedic performance. And while most of the humor delivered falls just shy of corny, that can’t be said for Drew Sage and his Bellhop, though his absurdly delivered humor is ultimately by design. This is the one over the top, overly exaggerated character who is designed to be outrightly funny, and he is. Drew does a fine job with the role, as does Autumn and Monica as Diana and Julia, respectively. Julia doesn’t get altogether too much stage time, but it’s a good role and played well by Monica, especially in Act 2 while she is attempting to get, um, chummy with Tito, while Autumn’s job as Diana is mostly to be the seductress, and in this she does well, though I would like to see a bit more of a natural sounding or emotional delivery of her lines, rather than what feels like a bit dispassionate.

Lend Me a Tenor, Ken Ludwig’s first major hit, follows the standard formula of a farce, with its exaggerated caricatures, physical and situational comedy, and general absurdity, but it’s unique enough in its writing, setting, and sensibility that it is looked upon as one of the finest of the modern farces. The Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts production takes this solid foundation and builds on it with a scenic design that allows for the kind of movement and motion that matches the quick pace of the show’s dialog, and a cast that delivers on all aspects of the play, including a decent amount of physical comedy, plenty of mistaken identities, and all of the craziness that you’d expect from a piece like this. The design is solid, the cast delivers, and the laughs are plenty in this farcical play, and at the end of the day, it’s just the latest in a season of enjoyably entertaining shows at Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts.

Ken Ludwig’s Lend Me a Tenor runs on stage at Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts in Marysville through April 27. For more information, including ticket availability and sales, visit https://redcurtainfoundation.org/.

Photo credit: Kenny Randall